Obama’s Border Problem

In his recently published Grand Strategies, Charles Hill reflects on the reason that the Republic of Venice, a vast commercial, naval and diplomatic power stretching across the eastern Mediterranean, ultimately failed to become a modern state, meeting an ignominious end in 1796. Its failure, Hill explains, was owing to “its inability to define and defend the first principle of sovereign statehood: clear borders.” By extrapolation, it is equally evident that a sovereign state, no matter how long it has been established, will begin to falter and break down when it is no longer willing to clearly demarcate and vigorously defend the boundaries that give it its character. A state requires plenary consolidation if it is to preserve its unity and coherence as a functioning polity—a lesson now being relearned by several European countries inundated with North African refugee claimants in the wake of the “Arab Spring.”

As for President Obama, his problem—one of many—is that he has no clear sense of borders and what borders imply for the continued existence of the nation state—unless, of course, it is precisely the concept and reality of the nation state he wishes to undermine. “Either Obama has no idea what he’s doing,” writes PJM Tatler editor Bryan Preston, “or he does know what he’s doing. I’m not sure which possibility is the more disturbing.” The jury is still out on the nature of the president’s ulterior purposes, but the effect of his policies, whether intended or not, cannot be evaded.

In his May 19 speech on the Middle East, Obama called for the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 (actually, pre-1967) borders, that is, the 1949 cease fire or Armistice Lines recognized by the principal framers of UN Resolution 242 in the aftermath of the Six Day War as impermanent and subject to negotiation. Were these temporary lines—the “Auschwitz Borders” in then foreign minister Abba Eban’s memorable phrase—to become internationally recognized borders, Israel would immediately find itself once again in an untenable position. In the context of modern warfare, it would become frankly indefensible. Lord Caradon himself, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations and one of the chief architects of Resolution 242, stated in the Beirut Daily Star for June 12, 1974, that “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.” Similarly, Caradon’s colleague, Undersecretary of State Eugene V. Rostow, writing in the American Journal of International Law, explains in his discussion of 242 that Israel was “certified by the Security Council” to remain in the captured territories and “would not be required to withdraw without a prior agreement of peace.” Obama appears wholly oblivious to original documentary intent.

Moreover, as far back as 1967 and Resolution 242, it was already obvious to the American Joint Chiefs of Staff (who prepared the Pentagon Map of the region), UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg and Rostow himself that the “minimum territory needed by Israel for defensive purposes,” as specified by the Map, included the Golan Heights and the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria—considerations that the present road map does not embrace and the president does not accept.

Indeed, as Robert Spencer points out, Obama has gone even further than attempting to turn Israel into a rump state. In positing a “contiguous” Palestine, he envisions cutting Israel in half to allow for the geographical harmonization of Gaza and the West Bank, thus depriving Israel not only of defensible borders but of anything that resembles a viable border in the first place. “Not only will [the Palestinians] not be pacified,” Spencer writes, “they will be emboldened…to move in for the kill.”

In fact, Obama has not simply demanded that Israel revert to the “1967” borders or the so-called “Green Line” but that it permit itself to be vivisected along the lines of the 1937 Peel Commission Plan or the Woodhead Partition recommendation of 1938, transforming the country into a scattering of small, exposed territorial morsels entirely at the mercy of its enemies. (The United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 comprised only a modest improvement upon these cartographical abbreviations.) The very idea of a border would then become entirely meaningless and the later Mandate plan to dismember the country to the advantage of the Arabs will have been realized. There would then be two tinier Israels, neither of them with a very long lease on life. Despite a few mollifying remarks concerning the inadmissibility of Hamas at the peace table, delivered during Obama’s meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 20, and the politically expedient softening of his stance in his May 22 speech to AIPAC, the presidential shearing is likely to persist.

However, Obama’s border confusion—or agenda—applies not only to the Jewish state but to his own country as well. It is now obvious that Obama has no credible intention of defending his own southern border from the ongoing violence of the Mexican drug cartels, the infiltration of Islamic terrorists across undefended terrain and the flood of illegal immigrants sluicing into the U.S. on a daily basis. The president has claimed that the border fence authorized by Congress is “now substantially complete,” but according to reports, the “varying levels of operational control,” whatever that means, cover a mere 44% of a 2000 mile border and just 15% may be classified as fully controlled. The rate of entry for these illegals is estimated at 700,000 per year, swelling the eight to twelve million (as per the Department of Homeland Security) and perhaps considerably more already in place, sufficient to change the demographic profile of the country.

Obama did a splendid job yesterday reading from his teleprompter. But in the course of his speech when he told AIPAC (who cheered his insincere pro-Israel statements) that he wasn't "naive" he should have been laughed off the stage. Trying to restart a failed and disastrous peace process with an implacable enemy hell-bent on Israel's destruction is not just naive, it's insane in the Einsteinian sense; for what better term is there to describe someone who imagines he can succeed where better men under more promising conditions have failed?

coninued

http://apollospaeks.townhall.com ApolloSpeaks

Without a scintilla of evidence that the Palistinians were ready to do an Anwar Sadat and accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State Obama (like Bush 41 and Clinton before him) recklessly plunged ahead pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions on freezing settlements, wisely resisted by Netanyahu. After two years of Obama relentlessly demanding concessions from Israel, then publicly raising the issue of the 67 borders, Netanyahu had enough and put an end to this nonesense by politely scolding a livid president in public. Obama is insanely blind to his own naivity and folly, as are all the fairyland losers on the radical Left when it comes to the Middle East and the civilizational war with Islam.

Click my name to continue reading this widely linked Townhall piece.

WeMustResist

Why has the POTUS not been impeached? His inaction on the Southern border is either treason or a high misdemeanor. His bizarre interference in Libya, Egypt and Israel, compared to his igorance of Iran, is also strong evidence that he despises the USA and wishes as much failure as it can get in one term.

The president has enforced the border, unwillingly I might add. With a million Mexicans migrating here a year legally, and another million illegally, plus sanctuary cities all over, you're not going to stop this migration by impeaching the president anyway. So don't blame it all on Obama.

The president is just as oblivious to Israel's plight as you are to Mexico's.

Heck, even the Price is Right is still giving away vacations south of the border, despite 35k murdered and thousands kidnapped in the past 4 years due to the cartel war. Imagine our countrymen's surprise should they see armored SUVs shooting up a neighborhood, or another city's entire police force resigning, or cartels holding up the highway, or tanks engaging in firefights. So don't feel like you're the only one who knows nothing about Mexico.

Not so strange now how millions of them flee every year, even to sneak~ over here, is it?

I'm not going to ask you how Obama's "bizarre interference" is "strong evidence" of anti-Americanism, because I recognize idiocy with such laser accuracy that even idiots themselves become aware of it.

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/ DrAvrington

Ah all to boast their grand "globalist" design. Obama is a lackey hireling as was near-every President since Woodrow Wilson. There's a reason why Carter, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obongo, amongst many others don't bother with the border, have continued the anti-Constitutional Socialization and impoverishing of America. They know that American's today are not the same Americans that founded the country. Americans 100-200 years ago would never have allowed thing Socialist, amoral, corrupt and treasonous string of "Republican" and "Democrat" pseudo-Presidents and their thoroughly interlocking Administrations – inclusive of those power brokers, bankers and multinational businesses that are behind them. Hell Jorge Bush didn't control the borders, expanded socialism, attempted to or did sell off much of America, collapsed Academia and there was Clinton, Bush and Carter before him that did the exact same treasonous crap. How did Bill Clinton, one of only 2 impeached Presidents in US history, a liar, criminally corrupt philandering adulterer and some say traitor re:the forgotten Chinagate become the most loved American of all time especially in Canada to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars – probably our tax dollars? The same way the Egyptian sodomite and mass murdering PLO terrorist Yassir Arafat – who was responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden – was turned into a Nobel Peace Prize Winning "Palestinian" "President" of the "peace partner" PLA and most visited and honored foreign "dignitary" in US history. The same way that corrupt lying anti-scientific traitor Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for promulgating one of the biggest, albeit financially lucrative, lies: "Global Warming". The same way Communist Nelson Mandela won a Peace prize as well…. In old American each and every one of the aforementioned; inclusive of Henry Kissinger, George Soros, Pelosi, Feinstein, Kennedy, Clinton and numerous others would have been put either before a firing squad, on top of ol-sparky or lead to the gallows… It is no wonder America has declined from the most productive and progressive nation this Earth has ever seen into another corrupt, misguided, anti-Constitutional "globalist" banana republic…. Just terrible… SRA

Spider

Can anyone tell me how this anti-semite (- Obama- brother to Reverend Wright and Louis Farakon ) could have lulled more than 80% of Jews in this country to vote for him ?? It sounds to me from the applouse he received at AIPAC that even after all that has been said and done that Jews are still buying his bald faced lies. I can not understand how otherwise smart and good people blindly follow someone with a "D" after their name who clearly would allow his Mu-Slim conspirators to commit genocide against their own people.

OLJingoist

Spider… Be assured this was a hand picked Jewish left event.
Yeah they exist, but are now a small minority of Jewish voters.
The poser never appears in front of anything but a rigged audience. That is the reason the WH banned a newspaper from covering him. A reporter filmed a protester. Can't have that now can we ?

Rob Jones

Just as you identify the left as an enemy, the left does the exact same thing. You're relieved when Democrats like Lieberman show some ability to learn what's going on in the world, because it's so hard to imagine "the enemy" having a soul.

First take the log out of your eye. Obama is hardly any sort of menace that Ahmadinejad is. One is a rich westerner who snubs Israel, and the other openly and gleefully wages war against Israel through terrorist groups. You misplace your strong words.

Michael

Spider,you are absolutely correct.The answer to your Q? is:US Jews,mainly Lieberals (Libs) suckers to the fellow of Grant Confuser.They have never experiences evil on political stage.

Mustaffa Moohammed

How can you people be so stupid. BHO has followed the islamic rules on every thing he has done. Elections have consequences. The media hid everything and America said "OK". How can someone finish university studies and have no friends, no stories, no transcripts? Just like the phoney birth certificate, his life, as presented to voters, is a facade of islamic deception.

PhillipGaley

But in addition to what I wrote above, as: "The heart is desperately wicked—who can fathom it, . . ." from the prophet Jeremiah—and, C-SPAN was of some assist—it finally occurred to me that, as with Carter's insistence upon a racial interpretation of life, in everyone except in himself—who had been schooled in a racist South—or, as with Clinton's use of position and place for the merest base pleasure—or if in the simplistic insensitivity of a Joe Biden, just a whole lotta these guys—leaders?—aren't all that smart, and hang together by the simple cohesiveness which may be attributable to one's having a sheepskin, . . . but yet, they're gonna run the world, . . . it's amazing, . . . simply amazin', . . .

PhillipGaley

. . . . and generally, lacking both in courage and in any proper substrate for it—as in dealing with N Korea, Iran and many other similar, . . .

Dispozovdaburka

The reason why most jewish people vote democratic is that evil invaded them preivously
from the Right.
The reason why we all should open our eyes is that the same evil
is now
coming from the
Left.
Too far Right, Too far Left, Same result.

sandykramer

Obama has as much geopolitical acumen as Harold Camping has knowledge of eschatology. To give the Devil his due, I should add that Obama does have taquiyya down pat.